Several highly active ingredients, such as antitumoral agents, immunosuppressors, antivirals, several hormone derivatives, are deemed as being potentially dangerous for the healthcare staff who is required to handle them upon administration. To the purpose, in the United States, the NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) issued some directives to safeguard the health and safety of healthcare personnel (www.cdc.gov/niosh) and listed the dangerous active ingredients for which particular care should be taken upon administration, such as using gloves and glasses when the drug package (vial or the like) is being opened, etc.
In a number of cases, the administration of many drugs is carried out intravenously, either because of the inherent characteristics of the active ingredient, or when the patient's conditions are such that oral administration is not practicable; when, as sometimes happens, the therapy is chronic, the patient is regularly subjected to intravenous infusions, even for several months.
Water is the preferred medium used in injectable drugs, but unfortunately it cannot be used with all drugs, due to its chemical-physical incompatibility with several active ingredients. Some of the latter, in fact, prove to be either insoluble or instable in water and are necessarily formulated with lipophilic solvents, such as vegetable oils, such as castor oil, olive oil or organic solvents and surfactants, such as ethanol, benzyl alcohol, polyethylene glycols (PEG), polysorbates (such as polysorbate 80 or Tween80®), etc.
It has been found that the use of lipophilic mediums is incompatible with several plastic materials used for intravenous administration, particularly with conventional PVC (polyvinyl chloride) from which said solvents may extract phthalates, particularly di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP), i.e. fat-soluble compounds that are very toxic to the organism.
For these reasons, common infusion bags for intravenous administration must not be used with the injectable active ingredients formulated in lipophilic mediums, but rather infusion bags have to be selected which are made of inert plastic material, such as polyethylene (PE), polypropylene or other polyolefins or alternatively glass bottles.
This incompatibility is reported in the instructions written on the information leaflets that are attached to packages of drugs injectable by infusion formulated in several mediums, such as tacrolimus (Prograf®), cyclosporine (Sandimmun®) taxanes (e.g. docetaxel—Taxotere® and paclitaxel—Taxol®). It is understood, however, that there is a non-remote chance that, by mistake, due for example to hurry, distraction, incompetence by the healthcare staff responsible for preparing the infusion bag, these instructions are not clearly understood and a vial containing the active ingredient in the lipophilic solvent is inadvertently administered in a conventional PVC bag, with clear dangerous consequences for the patient receiving the infusion and consequent serious charges against the healthcare staff.
The present invention aims at overcoming these drawbacks by providing a kit for administering drugs formulated in lipophilic solvents by the parenteral, advantageously intravenous, route, which provides a healthcare operator in charge of treating a patient with all the material required, in order to prevent any risk deriving from mistakes, negligence or incompetence.